Lightroom: List view for Library

I would like to have the ability to show items in the Library as a list, rather like one might see in a spreadsheet program. Very small thumbnail alongside columns of data. The columns could be customized in order or content.
This would allow for another method of sorting by various data.
Oh, and make this list view printable while youre at it ;)

- Allow users to define metadata tagsets: the metadata viewing presets.
- Support more of the things in sort order that are supported for lib filters and smart collections, and allow plugins to tap in to sort order...

Granted, part of the benefits of the proposed FR is for rapid scanning of a multitude of photos - my additions would not help with this, but would help with the other items.

Also, if support were added for plugins to get in on this, then there would be even more options... for example: smart columns (plugin driven and dynamic...).

John's plug-in is very useful as it is, but has some clunky workarounds to shortcomings in the SDK. Having a list view feature built-in to LR (as it should have been from the beginning) would alleviate the SDK limitations. In addition to what's stated above, the ability to export the list in multiple formats (CSV, XML, etc.) would be essential.

John,
I'm specifically referring to two areas we discussed, both of which you indicated were SDK limitations...
1) The inability to implement scrollbars in the list view. The use of a slider control to choose a 30 line segment, although usable, isn't nearly as efficient as using scrollbars when there are hundreds of items in the list.
2) The inability to make multiple selections using shift-click is again inefficient since the user has to individually select the desired items.
These strike me as "clunky", perhaps a bad term. "Inefficient" might be better.

John, to clarify...
My statement about having the ability to export was directed at the previous posts, not your plug-in. People had not mentioned an export capability, so I was adding it to the list of features desirable in a built-in list view.

Regarding your ListView 1.56, I finally got a chance to work with it this past weekend. The export features you added work very well and should meet most, if not all, user's needs for interfacing with other applications. The ability to save a selection as a collection also looks very useful. Had a couple of other things to discuss...for continuity will do it on LRForums as before.

Finally, for other users out there who may be reading this...
John's ListView plug-in fills a void that has been in LR since the beginning. If you haven't used a list view before, give the plug-in a try. You get a different view of your metadata, and the plug-in can fill in some of the missing functionality that LR should have as a DAM application. And the ability to export your metadata to other software like spreadsheets and databases makes the plug-in all that much more worthwhile. I recommend it.

ListView allows me integrate Lightroom with InDesign, which fills in many of the gaps in functionally within Lightroom, such as the proper placement of metadata in the print module. I also use it to proof metadata before exporting images for web use, as the Lightroom metadata fields have such small fonts and easier to review when the key fields (title, caption, headline, location) are in nice neat columns. Typos easily identified. John has also implemented many improvements I have requested over time.

As much as I appreciate that many users would prefer everything be native so they never have to use a plugin, I can't help but wonder:

* Did you try JB's plugin, and it fell short, or
* Did you never try it?

I mean, Adobe created a plugin SDK so they didn't have to make everything native (or conversely: so users don't have to do without the features they've been unable to implement natively). Why not just use a plugin:

* Until the functionality you desire is implemented natively, or
* forever

Don't get me wrong: I'm not pushing for plugins (mine or anybody else's), I'm really just curious: why are you posting in the forum about the need for a list view, without mentioning the plugin which currently implements a list view?

I mean, I get that the list-view plugin is not free - is that it?

???

PS - to read long filenames in Lr, it helps to make the thumbnails bigger, but yeah: you get less on a page that way..

It is designed to provide a list view, not something else like importing data (though maybe it will go in that direction see http://lightroomsolutions.com/list-vi... ). There is a plugin called LrTransporter that is designed for importing from text files.

Plugins are fine if you really want to go in that direction. I prefer to use as few as possible...Could it really be that hard to for the Lr team to add this? I mean, they could ask the Bridge team to share. ;-)

The copyright office has added new requirements. Can you add a feature to allow exporting the title, file name, and other selected metadata into an Excel file (preferably the one ECopyright provides)? If the title field was blank then a substitution of the filename would be helpful. There are some plug-ins that will do this but it still requires a lot of cut and paste. Lightroom is all about streamlining your workflow. Thanks for the consideration.